Increasing government accountability i.e. stemming corruption

My friend Prathima Manohar of The Urban Vision recently asked how we may improve government transparency and accountability in India. Here are my thoughts to that end. And raising the ugly head of corruption in this discussion is all too inevitable.

Why do you really need a 'consultant' working for you?

Why do companies really need all these highly paid external consultants working for them? You may wonder. If you posed the same question to the management of these companies, they usually say "Oh, to help us think outside the box," or "to temporarily plug a skills gap," or "to help us solve a specific problem using industry best practices," or maybe plain and simple "to help us sort out this mess that we've created."

Is climate-change a red herring? You be the judge

Recent frenzies in the climate debate have in my opinion made a mockery out of what should be one legitimate piece of a much broader initiative. One can argue that recent climate summits are in fact distracting our leaders from other more pressing missions. Do we really believe that a significant portion of our natural disasters are caused by "climate change?" Isn't it convenient to just blame polluters and consumers without looking at the larger framework within which they try to co-exist? The armchair pundits will of course say "of course we know it’s not just about the climate, it’s more about finding an emotionally legitimate ploy to rally people towards new sustainable solutions for energy and development." Sorry, that argument’s not going to fly any longer with your electorates or shareholders. There are larger burning issues, no pun intended. The fulcrum policy shifts what will truly enable man-induced climate change and other issues to be alleviated will need to center around mitigating special interest’s clout over policy-making. Once this core issue is tackled in the larger economies, while allowing for grassroots entrepreneurial innovation, many would argue that energy could in fact become a very cheap and abundant commodity, and in many cases not requiring the grid.